28 May – Seventh Sunday of Easter
The Spirit of God's Life
The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church, the principle of its life and unity. God is living in us because he lets us share his Spirit.
(from the Sunday Missal)
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BAD TURNED INTO GOOD
For homework, I was required to make a drawing of a flight of stairs. I finished it, and just as I was putting away the ink, a blot dropped right in the middle of the picture. It was too late to draw another. I felt so discouraged that I burst into tears.
My father, hearing of the trouble said gently, "Don't worry – the ink blot looks just like a black patch on the side of a terrier – all you have to do is draw a dog around it. Don't get so easily discouraged, honey. Often it only needs a little grit and imagination to turn the bad into the good. Remember, few things are as hopeless as they may seem at first."
I sketched a dog around the ink blot. The next day, my picture was voted the best in the class. "You see what a little imagination will do," the teacher said. "That little fox terrier just completes a good drawing."
When things go wrong, I always remember that black-patched terrier.
- Susan Cooper (1000 Stories You Can Use, Volume Two by Frank Mihalic, SVD)
How can you turn something bad into something good today? Use your imagination.
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Acts of the Apostles 1:15-17, 20-26
One day Peter stood up to speak to the brothers – there were about a hundred and twenty persons in the congregation: "Brothers, the passage of scripture had to be fulfilled in which the Holy Spirit, speaking through David, foretells the fate of Judas, who offered himself as a guide to the men who arrested Jesus – after having been one of our number and actually sharing this ministry of ours.
"In the Book of Psalms it says:
Let someone else take his office.
"We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling around with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptising until the day when he was taken up from us – and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection."
Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias, they prayed, "Lord, you can read everyone's heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place." They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he as listed as one of the twelve apostles.
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1 John 4:11-16
My dear people,
since God has loved us so much,
we too should love one another.
No one has ever seen God;
but as long as we love one another
God will live in us
and his love will be complete in us.
We can know that we are living in him
and he is living in us
because he lets us share his Spirit.
We ourselves saw and we testify
that the Father sent his Son
as saviour of the world.
If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God,
God lives in him, and he in God.
We ourselves have known and put our faith in
God's love towards ourselves.
God is love
and anyone who lives in love lives in God,
and God lives in him.
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John 17:11-19
Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said:
"Holy Father, keep those you have given me true to your name,
so that they may be one like us.
While I was with them,
I kept those you had given me true to your name.
I have watched over them and not one is lost
except the one who chose to be lost,
and this was to fulfill the scriptures.
But now I am coming to you
and while still in the world I say these things
to share my joy with them to the full.
I passed your word on to them,
and the world hated them,
because they belong to the world
no more than I belong to the world.
I am not asking you to remove them from the world,
but to protect them from the evil one.
They do not belong to the world
any more than I belong to the world.
Consecrate them in the truth;
your word is truth.
As you have sent me into the world,
I have sent them into the world,
and for their sake I consecrate myself
so that they too may be consecrated in truth."
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Lately, the Catholic Church has been under attack by various sources claiming that some truth has been hidden by the Church from the eyes of the world.
One of the ways that truth is determined, not just religious truth, but historical truth as well, is by the use of evidence. How can we know that something like the Gospel of Judas does not present truth? Firstly, it was not widely accepted by Christians at that time. Gospels that are in today's canon of the bible were gospels that were written and accepted and used by many Christians all over. Just because the Gospel of Judas was written around those centuries doesn't mean that what it contains is true. One of the ways we can tell whether a particular gospel is widely used in those days or not is by the number of manuscripts available to us today. And for the gospels and New Testament books that in the canon of the bible, there are hundreds of copies manuscripts still existing today. How many still in existence for the Gospel of Judas? Answer: One. That tells us just how widely accepted it was at that time.
Anyone with a different idea or teaching which he claims comes from God has not only to have the communities of Christians agree that it is from God, but it also has to agree with the teachings of the faith right back to the beginning of the scriptures. This means that the "new" teaching has to be in line and not contradict all the scriptures written before it. If there is a contradiction, then it cannot be from the same Holy Spirit that inspired the writing of those books, from both Old and New Testament.
Now what happens if you decided not to believe in a certain aspect of Christianity? What you can do is to break away from the established church and form your own. However, still choosing to call yourself Christian, you therefore need a bible. But what if the bible has some parts that are not in line with your ideology? Simple. Just take out those parts of the bible that teach contrary to your own ideology. And there you have it – a new church formed under you.
This is exactly how the King James Version of the Bible came about. Yes, that bible that is still in use today by many of our Protestant brethren. If you don't believe me, go check it out on Wikipedia. Now if you still don't believe that, try changing the entry in Wikipedia to the one that you believe history to be. What will happen is that the community of users of Wikipedia will see the changes you have publicly made. If they agree with what you have written, then it will remain so. However, if a majority of the community decides that what you have written is a fabrication of history, then your version will be thrown out and the original version will remain. This is essentially how the community of Christians work throughout the centuries.
So what can you do? Well, if you happen to be a King and have lots of money, you can go set up your own version of Wikipedia with your own version of how the bible came about… which is what happened with the King James Version of the Bible.
What happened from then on? Well, if this new church can establish itself by taking out books from the bible, and altering teachings, then subsequent Christians who were not happy with the teachings of the new churches can also do the same. After all their parent church did that. That is how we come to today's world of hundreds (or thousands) of little Christian denominations, each with their own interpretation of what it means to be Christian.
There is only one Christian church, which until today, has had an unbroken line of fidelity to the teachings of the apostles. Sure, there are tiny squabbles here and there, but the basic tenets of faith are agreed upon by all the members of this church. Is this not different from other denominations where one pastor of a church in Jurong can teach something completely different from a pastor of a church in the same denomination in Tampines? This is what it means to be 'one' church, as Jesus prays at the beginning of the gospel reading.
How is it possible? No man can give that kind of guarantee to a church to retain an unbroken line of fidelity for so many centuries. True. It is the Holy Spirit that has allowed this church to retain its fidelity, such that all its teachings are completely in line and do not contradict the teachings of the apostles. This is because the Holy Spirit has been with this church all along. Since the Holy Spirit is God himself, and anything that God resides in is rendered holy, this is truly a holy church.
This is what it means by an apostolic church – one that teaches with the authority of the apostles through an unbroken chain of the handing down of power and authority of the apostles who were given it by Jesus.
What's more, this is the church established by Jesus Christ. It is the universal church whose teachings are that of Jesus himself, guaranteed to be the truth as taught by the Holy Spirit. It is this universal church which is made accessible to all people for all time.
And in case you haven't realised what this church is, the word 'universal' is the same as the word 'catholic'.
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Prayer: We pray for all Christians to be led by the soul of the universal church, to be gathered once again into the same flock, so that all Christians may be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one.
Give Thanks to the Lord for: Sending his Spirit to always be with the one, holy, catholic, apostolic church.
Upcoming Readings:
Mon, 29 May – Acts 19:1-8; John 16:29-33
Tue, 30 May – Acts 20:17-27; John 17:1-11a
Wed, 31 May – Zephaniah 3:14-18 or Romans 12:9-16b; Luke 1:39-56; Feast of the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth
Thu, 01 Jun – Acts 22:30, 23:6-11; John 17:20-26; Memorial for St. Justin, martyr
Fri, 02 Jun – Acts 25:13b-21; John 21:15-19; Memorial for Sts. Marcellinus and Peter, martyrs
Sat, 03 Jun – Acts 28:16-20, 30-31; John 21:20-25; Memorial for Sts. Charles Lwanga and co., martyrs
Sun, 04 Jun – Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23; Pentecost Sunday
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Disclaimer: The reflections expressed in this e-mail are the writer's own. They may not necessarily reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church. Nonetheless we should all be able to learn something from it.
